Training - Quarry Road Loop at Night

Ever since we've moved to this apartment I've been doing what I call the Quarry Road loop. It consists of a loop that, oddly enough, has a section on Quarry Road. It basically follows the Farmington River, and since there are no waterfalls in the Farmington River (at least near my loop), it follows that the loop is mainly flat.

When I first got here it took me just about an hour to do the loop. The first time took about 1:10 but that's because I got lost twice. When I "got in shape" I regularly hit 54-55 minutes, and a nice hard effort would get me down to 51 minutes. I have my landmarks, my efforts, and I have an idea of how well I'm going when I hit my marks.

Today I did the loop on my road bike, equipped with all the lights I described previously. When I rolled out of the parking lot a couple kids driving in called out, "Cool bike!"

Reminder of what my bike looks like at night.

Right, the Fast and Furious look. I think it's cool in one way but I think most people think of it as a Fast and Furious look.

Anyway the start of my loop is always a bit deceiving since I start from the apartment parking lot. In other words, like most of my riding, I have no warm up.

Predictably I almost always go out too hard, doing a sharp 600-800 watt effort to get up to speed, throttling back to "only" 400 watts and start cruising at about 25 mph. Then, after a few hundred yards, I realize I'm going way too hard, ease up, and back it off to about 200 watts, maybe 18 to 20 mph. I huff and puff until I get to one of the cool spots on the loop, the first turn.

It's a nice right turn, great if I have a green, a disappointment if I have to stop, and unfortunately it seems to be red about two thirds of the time I get there. It's tempting to blow the "right on red" red but I haven't ever, even though it's only one of two real corners on my almost-hour long loop.

The right turn dumps you out onto a nice road, wide shoulder, smooth pavement. It rapidly narrows down to a normal 18 inch shoulder but it's a flat fast road and I usually do some pretend "pulling the field" here. You know, the little Walter Mitty thing where you imagine that your team leader just tapped you on the shoulder and said, "Okay, we need you to do 40kph for the next 100k."

So you get to the front, put it in the big ring 14, and start rolling.

Tonight was no different, doing about 1/200th of my fantasy 100k pull at 40 kph, my blue halo the only "team leader" accompanying me. A car came up behind me cautiously, and when I signaled a right turn the driver eased back even further, coming to almost a complete stop. The SuperFlash blinky and dual Down Low Glows make for a pretty conspicuous night bike.

This is the second (and last) real turn, a nice sharp uphill turn. No stop, no light, so it's always taken at full speed. A short rise follows so it's always big ring, stand, and go. The missus dropped me here once - I was tired, not paying attention, and she scampered up the rise. I had to do a 650+ watt effort to bring her back and vowed to pay more attention from there on. Tonight I rolled up the rise, trying to stay on top of the pedals. Usually I blow before the trees open up but tonight I rolled right through to the slight curves, big ringing it no problem.

There's a bit of a lull then a stop sign. At the stop sign I beat a car there by about 30 yards, stopped, and rolled on. I could see the hesitation in the car's lights until I wiggled my handlebars (where my NiteRider headlight is mounted). Then the car braked firmly to a stop. Since most people roll through that stop at about 20 or 30 mph, I wanted him to stop.

One trick I've learned is to ride "swervy" at night. My bike slaloms down the road, the headlight scanning a 10-15 degree arc, my bike swerving about six inches on every downstroke. This is because the human eye sees motion first, color second, and shape third. A wiggling head or tail light attracts attention because it's moving, and although I sometimes accidentally smooth out, I try and purposely wiggle the bike the whole time I ride at night. This is especially true if I know a car is coming up behind me or approaching from the front. I'll stand up to swerve a bit more, add more motion. When the passing cars go well over the yellow line I know I've succeeded. When I forget to swerve and the pass within a few feet, I get reminded real quick to be a bit more swervy.

I do a similar tactic during the day, flapping instead of swerving. I wear an unzipped windvest if it's a bit cool out. The flapping vest attracts a lot of attention, more so than a "still" back. I got this idea from a motorcycle-riding volunteer fireman. He told me he rides his motorcycle with a flapping rag thing tied to the back (a bandana or something). It attracts attention. I queried him on the need to do so. He told me about a call where a guy ran into the back of a fire truck at a fire - flashing lights, hoses everywhere, all that and the guy drove right into the truck. He wasn't drunk, he wasn't high, he was "thinking about my golf game". And very apologetic.

So, flapping vest when it's cool, and wiggly riding at night. Remember that.

Anyway, right after that stop sign there's a short sharp hill that is, well, short and sharp. Although normally I shift into the small ring, tonight I rolled over in a pretty big gear. I couldn't see if I was in the 53x23 (meaning I only had the 53x25 left, and I prefer not to use the big-big combo) so I didn't want to shift down. Based on my speed I think I was in something like a 19 - the advantage of not knowing what gear you're in due to the darkness behind the blue glow DLGs.

Then there's some slight undulations, ending in a long false flat. A pair of new houses sit on one side, a tiny farm on the other. The false flat is tough, deceiving, and much of the time I end up exploding dramatically as I hit the tree line. Tonight, with no references for gearing, afraid to shift down, I hammered up to, and into, the tree line. No detonations.

A truck pulled out way behind me at some point, and with a Y intersection coming up (with me veering to the left), I wanted to make it to the intersection before the truck got close to me. I made a strong sustained effort, not shifting down like normal, and after a minute of effort managed to get to the intersection well before the truck. Lo and behold the truck veered right, probably to get away from the two blue shoes and calves bobbing down the road in a wiggly fashion.

As soon as I veer left there's a tough little hill. It's extremely short but there are only two ways to take it - out of the saddle, 25-30 mph, or shifting down and easing over it, 10-15 mph. I grunted over it without going too hard, aiming at the 25 mph rather than the 30 mph.

Bonus was I could maintain some effort afterwards. I got high beamed at this point, aiming my light back at the car. It slowed but never turned down its blatant high beams so as it passed I hollered, "High beams!"

Maybe next time they'll turn them down. I was thinking of pretending I was blinded and veering at them. One time I sort of did that and the car came to a complete halt but the driver never turned down his high beams. Just stopped in the road and waited. I guess s/he thought I was going to car jack them. Whatever.

With a bunch of blue spots in my vision I continued on, adding an extra foot of distance from the edge of the road until the spots went away. There's a "you yield" stop sign and then some more flat stuff. That was uneventful, I started to ease a bit, going wide of the shoulder where there's an invisible pothole - the light hits it just right so there is no shadow so suddenly your bike just thumps hard. I've hit it maybe 20 times and I've learned to avoid that part of the road now.

A right turn at a stop, followed by a left at a light. Easy effort, not too hard.

Then rolling by the two gun places, the state police one and the private one. They fly RC planes at the state police range so I think they don't shoot there anymore. The other range I've heard full automatic ("machine gun") as well as silenced weapons, so the folks there are pretty serious. It's a wooded area, the river right next to the road (yes it floods regularly, and the state police are looking for a shooting range that doesn't require canoes to check the targets when it rains), and I rolled through there, turning the gears effortlessly. Beautiful.

The golf course hill was the next obstacle, a slight rise followed by a sharper one, leveling out at the golf course's parking lot. Sometimes I explode here and crawl past the parking lot but tonight I rolled easily over and through the busy area. The high beam blue spots were gone but the parking lot lights made up for them. Arg.

I did my one trackstand at a big intersection at the bottom of what they call Avon Mountain. No right on red and for good reason - lots of people have died here in the past 5 or 10 years. I did my trackstand, waited for green, checked for runaway trucks, and turned right.

I made it to my next light, slowly because of a short climb just before the light. I had a chance to check out my wattage - 144 watts - as I rolled up to the turn. Not very hard.

I bumped up the volume a bit after the right and rolled up to the first rise, maybe half a mile away. The bottom is protected from the wind but the top isn't, and as I crested the wind hit me.

Ah. Headwind on the return leg. Drat. That meant I felt good because I had a tailwind coming down to Avon Mountain.

I dropped down to the drops. Scooted forward on the seat. Started stamping out a good rhythm on the pedals. Lots of long straights, a couple rises, and I found myself able to go pretty hard, not blowing up. On the downhills I was careful to shift up aggressively - your heart rate can accelerate based on your cadence, so if I started pedaling too fast on the downhills I'd blow up. It worked, I didn't blow. I focused on pulling up, pulling over the top, and doing a complete power circle.

It occurred to me that I only do this when I'm feeling good, when I'm relatively fit. It also occurred to me that I forgot that this abs thing occurred to me. I hate it when I forget things and learn them all over again. I have to remember to work on this so I can do it for longer periods of time.

I also remembered another thing - I usually get this feeling in May or June. Okay, so it's August, but hey, I'll take "relatively fit". This realization encouraged me and I focused on working my abs - when my legs feel good my abs get recruited pretty hard. And tonight my legs were recruiting my abs to help out. Sort of an anatomical tap on the shoulder with the request to pull 100k at 40k per.

The rest of the ride was a blur. I knew I was on a 51 minute type ride, not a 55 or 58 minute. I started easing as I got a few driveways from the apartment. The street light switched from the far side to my side so I could finally see the elapsed time on the (unlit) SRM.

48:04

What?

Must be 48.04 miles and I didn't download my last ride (it resets when you accept a download). I checked again. 48:30-something.

Wow. That's for real.

I signaled to turn left into the driveway. The car about 50 yards back almost stopped - I guess the blue glow shoes and calves biker signaling was too much for them. I rolled into the parking lot, onto the sidewalk, and up to the door.

The missus opened the screen door (it's nice out, not too hot), let me and my glowing-blue bike in. She retrieved and fed me a piece of just made zucchini bread (think molasses bread taste, can't tell there's a vegetable in there).

Yum.

What a nice ride.

Training - Summer Night Ride

My first year of training a lot has resulted in a rediscovery of such forgotten things as burn out, fatigue, and general malaise.

Part of this is due to the fact that I've been doing way fewer races in the last 5 or 10 years compared to the glory years of the 90s and 80s. Instead of 45-55+ races, I've been doing perhaps 10 or 12. The lack of racing is a direct result of two things: fewer available crits and a shorter acceptable drive time. I used to drive an hour for 10 minutes of racing, so an hour crit in Baltimore was worth 5+ hours each way, but now my ratio is more like an hour for half an hour of racing. As a Cat 3 that rarely does races over an hour, this limits my travel radius to about 2 hours.

And, yes, road races would extend my range, but since I'd race the first 5 or 10 miles and train the rest, it's sort of like paying to have marshals at the corners of a training ride. Not something I'm willing to do anymore.

Another "malaise" factor is the solo training. I rarely race, rarely sit on a wheel, and rarely get to actually talk to someone when I train. I've taken to talking to our cats at home in somewhat normal voices and I figured that is a bad sign.

I've managed to get out a couple times with a very local ride. Unbelievably it's the first group ride I've done while I've been up here (it took 10 months to do the first one and an additional month to do the second one) if I don't count the random riders I've met while out on a solo ride.

To fix the lack of racing as well as the lack of social interaction, I've taken to doing a weekday night crit series. That's worth a post in itself so I'll talk about that some other time.

Another fix for the social interaction thing is to do a local group ride. There happens to be one right up the road, low pressure (my 205 watt ftp is at home here), and reasonably long - I think we end up spending about 2 hours out there. Combined with the 30+ minutes for the round trip there (I ride there - no driving involved) it makes for a nice ride. My ambitious self has thought about doing an hour or two beforehand, a la pro, but the most I've done is about 30 minutes.

The final thing I've done to break up the training routine is to ride a little bit after the group ride, i.e. after the ride has ended. This has a number of effects on my riding.

First, it's getting dark so it introduces that whole "riding at night" thing. It's cooler (literally), cool (figuratively), and simply a lot of fun. Night riding also allows me, for some reason, to maintain a much steadier tempo. It might be related to the fact that I don't have a good speed reference since the pavement makes it look like I'm going fast the whole time and I don't see much else. Night riding also helps me focus on pedaling, handling, and my overall attitude with my bike. I've alluded to this before but it helps to rediscover it.

Second, if I know I'll be riding at night, I have to carry all the lights and stuff so I'm prepared to do so. Since most of the group ride is in daylight, the extra gear helps to tone down my naturally jumpy riding (sprinting after trucks and such). This helps keep me from being too much of an obnoxious, elitist "racer" when riding with the group.

It also starts to make my bike look like a "winter bike" rather than a summer bike. Winter bikes have lots of gear and resemble a grand touring car whereas a summer bike resembles a bare-boned race car. A few months of either set up and I'm ready to return to the other one. Since it's virtually August that means I'm getting ready to revert to "winter bike" mode.

Finally, night riding means getting some cool gear out of their storage bags and hanging them on the bike. As a total bonus the bike looks frickin' awesome with all the light gear on it.

To wit:

What you see from the side at night.

I'll have clearer pictures below but the bike had three sets of lights. A NiteRider front light (10v halogen, no longer made, I think it's called a TrailRat), a Down Low Glow pair of blue lights (dual light set), and a SuperFlash rear blinky. The blue halo from the DLGs are the best and I have people slowing just to check them out. I call them my "Fast and Furious" lights.

A front quarter shot, the headlight is starting to die. Fast and Furious bike. I feel like the car needs them now too.

Note: the two above pictures had a shutter exposure that is about 1/2 second and I'd just finished my ride so there is a heartbeat "bump" in there blurring things up. Sorry about that.

Even with the flash the DLGs are super bright. The headlight is not as bright but it projects more, i.e. before my uncharged battery started to give up the light would let me see road hazards before I stumbled into them.

From this angle you can see just how bright the DLGs are, how much attention they attract. It's a very, very good thing when riding in the dark. At dusk they don't do too much, just put a blue glow on your legs, bottles, and frame, but when it gets darker they put a blue halo around your bike. Since they mount under tubes the rider doesn't see it and therefore doesn't see blue lines everywhere they look. Or would they be yellow? I don't know, but you know what I mean, you don't have the DLG tube burned into your retinas.

I feel like a bike racer in Pro Cycling Manager with the "selected rider" halo on the ground around me.

Note the round "halo" on the pavement around your team's riders in Pro Cycling Manger.

Anyway, the set up is really cool. It does take some time to set up - yesterday I had this idea to "pre-ride" a bit, perhaps 1-1.5 hours, then go to the shop to meet up with the ride. Instead, with my small frame and correspondingly limited places to put all my lights, I spent that whole time (and more) getting things hooked up just so. As it was I had to time trial to the shop and barely made it there before the ride left. So much for my 1.5 hour "pre-ride".

If you want to fit all this stuff on a 52 cm Cannondale, read on.

What I have on the bike and a clearer picture on how it fits.

From the front:
1. NiteRider headlight, mounted upside down on the bar mount. The SRM head got in the way so this was a puzzle for me to work out. I tried to put the light on the helmet, trying one helmet, then another (both weren't really stable), then went back to the bars and decided to mount the light upside down on the wrong side of the bars. That worked and it helps that the light has no up or down, it's just "a light". Plus it was getting late and I needed to get going. As a bonus I have nothing sticking up above the bars so the bike retains its low front end look (critical part of a Winter Bike look - low front end with tons of gear everywhere else). I like that.

2. Valve adapter #1, taped to the bottom of the stem. My Blackburn floor pump is fine with the little of the valve it can grab but my Blackburn AirStik is not. I carry a valve adapter (or extender, I guess) so I can use the AirStik.

3. SRM head, because, you know, I want to see stats on my ride. This caused problems because the headlight would sit in the same spot but it all worked out. Yay!

4. Battery pack for NiteRider mounted on downtube. It's on there pretty tight and didn't move even on some very fast and bumpy descents. It's heavy, relatively speaking. It didn't fit under the top tube and although I've mounted it under my stem on other bikes, I didn't like the way it made the bike handle. The down tube worked out well, and the battery has some anti-skid things on them to keep it from moving.

5. DLG blue lights - one under the top tube, one under the downtube. The top tube one is supposed to go on the left chainstay (it elongates the blue halo) but my cranks and spokes hit it. This is what you get with a close clearance design. On my mountain bike it's fine, on the road bike I had to fiddle and put it under the top tube.

6. Two bottles. I forgot to fill one, sort of on purpose, because my bike was getting really heavy with all the stuff on it. My tall bottle only fits on the seat tube since it doesn't clear the NR battery. The short bottle sits fine on the down tube.

7. DLG thing, it's a black box about 1/3 the size of the DLG battery. It transforms the battery stuff into the blue stuff so that the blue stuff glows from the sticks. Okay, it's probably just some electrical converter, but I think of it as a "Blue Glow Compiler". It turns electricity into Blue Glow. The BGC works well but I had to find a place for it - it sits to the left of the seat tube bottle cage, and it's the reason for the excessive electrical tape on the seat tube. There is no strap for it, normally you'd stick a piece of velcro on the frame and use another on the BGC. Since I didn't want velcro on the frame I decided to just tape the BGC in place.

8. Valve adapter #2, taped to the right seat stay up top. Just in case, you know?

9. DLG battery pack. This is lighter than the NiteRider battery but still not a freeby. It weighs about as much as my saddle bag, maybe a bit less. I put it on the seat tube between the seat stays. It looked like it wanted to slip so I put some antiskid tape (i.e. electrical tape looped so it's double sided) so it wouldn't migrate downward with each bump. The ploy worked successfully and the battery didn't move at all.

10. SuperFlash blinky. The best ever blinky. No tools to change the batteries (AAA, I use rechargables), a screwdriver to tighten onto the post (standard and oversize with one clamp).

11. Saddle bag. It has a tube of course but it has more. I have a Ritchey tire lever that also has a screw driver, 5 mm allen, and something else. There's a multi tool that has an 8mm allen, chain tool, and the rest of the allen wrenches. I have a small chain tool (just in case, I have two chain tools). And some normal tire levers and some tube box cardboard for booting severely cut tires. On very long rides (over 80-100 miles) I'll stuff a second tube in there, and in very long rides where there is no cell coverage I'll carry a third tube.

12. I'm missing my pump from this picture which I carry in my jersey pocket for now, but it would normally get tied to the bottom of the saddle bag. Alternatively I'll strap it to the side of the seat tube cage. I didn't do either because I lost the mounting strap for it.

I got back from the ride when it was pretty dark (I grabbed our camera and took pics right when I got home) and it was a great ride. I have to charge the NR battery because it's pretty much dead but the DLG battery is good for a while. Too bad I'll have to wait a bit to do my next night ride.

Till then...

How To - Night Riding For Fluent Riding

With the future missus out with a friend of hers (or not, she just walked back in), I went for a night ride. I had some problems keeping track of my NiteRider a while back, leaving the light, extension cord, and the helmet both sat on somewhere in the depths of Summer Street. So as not to waste the perfectly good (and virtually new) NiteRider battery and charger I had left, I bought a second setup. Now I simply have two batteries and two chargers for my one helmet light.

For someone who likes backups and keeping things in reserve, this is a good thing.

I went out for a ride the other night, enjoyed it, so when I had the opportunity to go out again, I went.

There's something special about the night. I know there are some physical things that happen - it's usually colder since the sun is down. Your pupils dilate because it's dark out. And I read somewhere that your adrenaline gets going - the fight or flight thing, sort of revving up, "just in case". With your vision handicapped, your other senses step up their vigilance. You're more aware of touch, of sound, and of smell (except tonight - I had a stuffy nose).

My legs were a bit tender from my run the other day - I yelped when the future missus lovingly squeezed my quad - and so I wasn't expecting too much. Usually I have a goal or two in mind when I go out on a ride. Sometimes it's as simply as "Go out and ride." Other times it's a bit more specific. Tonight was a specific kind of night.

With my legs not totally recovered, I'd feel any sort of effort. With the night freeing me of distractions, I knew my legs would be broadcasting their state loud and clear. I was thinking of how to increase my aerobic base - it's my Achilles heel, and if I had a better base, I'd be able to finish more races. More finishes means more chances to sprint. A friend of mine rode a few times with a very, very good racer who happens to sprint well. What interested my friend was that the sprinter trained at a steady, locomotive-like pace. Apparently he went 220-250 watts all the time - uphill, flats, down hills.

Now, for me, the instant I start heading uphill and put any kind of effort to the pedals, I'm at 250-300 watts and usually much more - it's not uncommon for me to look down and be doing 600-900 watts when I think I'm "just getting over this hill". On the flats I prefer to stay at 100-150 watts (except when chasing trucks, imaginary sprinters, etc.). And on downhills, well, I figured out recently that if I break 100 watts on a downhill I'm working harder than normal.

So tonight I decided to see if I could be a bit more consistent with my output - perhaps a bit less on the hills, a bit more on the flats, and a lot more on the downhills. My somewhat tender legs would be better at broadcasting their workload so it's be easier to gauge my efforts.

What ended up happening was I'd go 300+ up a rise, try and maintain that on the flats, blow up, and then try it again on the next rise but keeping the numbers a bit lower. Ultimately I did something right. Instead of the paltry 145 watt ride I did on the same loop a while ago (or even the 179 watts on my "fastest" ever ride on the loop), I managed to average 184 watts.

Eventually I want to even out my efforts a bit more - it would help to spin more on the rises so I don't have to push on the flats - but I think this was a good start.

Although that was my only conscious goal before I left, soon after I thought of something I wanted to work on - looking ahead.

During the day it's easy to look down too much - see what you're about to ride over. At night, with a spotlight type beam, if you look down you quickly lose track of where you're going. Because of this, riding at night with a helmet light is the best way to learn to look forward while riding.

This is because your helmet light illuminates what you look at - and if you look down, you can't see forward anymore. Suddenly a little twitch of the bar and you're veering off the road. Sounds sort of unsafe, right? Well, it forces you to keep your head up, to look ahead.

And by default, you can't see what's directly under you.

(As a side note, in a similar vein, I think that all student drivers should have the bottom 6-10 inches of the windshield covered in limo blackout tint - so you can't see what's directly in front of the car. This would teach much better driving habits by forcing the driver to look 50-100 feet ahead, not peer at the road 10 feet in front of the car. Of course when you park your car or do any close quarters manuevering, you can simply raise up on the seat to look at what's happening.)

When I first started riding at night, it was all mountain biking. I really wanted to see what I was riding over so I could time my wheel lifts and such. I even went as far as to mount a light on my seat tube pointing downwards so the ground below me lit up!

But this didn't help. I had two light systems with two lights each and carried a lot of extra weight, but lighting everything up around me didn't help - I couldn't go beyond a certain speed because I'd outride my visual field.

Everyone told me I need one good light pointing forward, not four with one pointing down, another up a bit, even another up a bit more, and another pointing perhaps 10 feet away. I understood what they were saying but couldn't commit - I'd always end up looking down (after doing something like flipping over a big rock that disappeared out of my 20-30 feet in front light beam).

That was until my light rig died on me.

Imagine you're in the depths of a Connecticut park, 450 acres of unmarked trails, rock fields with baby head sized rocks, stone walls, logs, and lots of low hanging branches and pesky trees that spring up in front of you.

Now imagine it's pitch black.

Yeah.

You can't see a thing.

You can't even feel your way forward because you're on a bike. Sure you can scrunch up your eyes so you don't get a branch poking in it, but it simply doesn't work.

This was vividly illustrated to us one night. A bunch of us saw some kids riding with AA battery lights. We cautioned them on the lights but they were having too much fun (or they were lost, I don't know). It was already pitch dark. We saw them an hour later, walking their bikes through the thickest of bushes, completely and utterly lost. They had no sense of direction, they couldn't see anything, and were literally trying to walk in a straight line until they hit something civilized - a road, a house, something.

One of us took pity and rode back to the parking lot with them.

I didn't think too much of it until the night my light went out.

Suddenly, things were very, very scary. I couldn't see anything, I couldn't see the trail, not even my handlebars. Close your eyes real tight (but before you do that make sure you do the following after you close your eyes - count to ten and then open them so you can keep reading).

What did you see? Yeah, well that's what I saw.

Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit - I had a couple friends with me who had lights. So one of them said, "Hey, just follow me." Before I could assimilate this concept, everyone took off, including him.

I realized that everywhere I looked, except where his light shone, was pitch black (the eyes closed kind). I started pedaling furiously to catch him. I was bounding over the trail, the familiar thrumming below me, then a big bang as I launched over a rock (or log or something). I landed, somehow made it, and kept going.

After a very scary 10 or so minutes, we made it back to the car. But in those 10 minutes, I learned more about fluid and zen-like bike handling than I had in the previous 10 years of racing. When you're flying over single track with obstacles up to a foot high over slippery and inconsistent terrain, you adjust your riding style so that you can handle anything that happens automatically. Your grip on your bars gets a bit tighter but your arms are loose. You let the rear wheel skip around if it wants. You deal with things.

When you see your "headlight" (i.e. the one on the rider 10 feet in front of you) illuminate something, you file it in your head and ride around the thing you imagine (since it's in the pitch black part of your visual field). You quickly learn to stack three or four such obstacles at a time - because Mother Nature doesn't space her trail obstacles 20 feet apart for you.

I suppose it's like reading music - if you can't read ahead, you can't play. So you learn to understand the notes that are a bar or two ahead of what you're playing.

I haven't done this in a while - but when I started up tonight, I realized my helmet light was aimed pretty well - at a reasonably level head angle, the beam focused about 40 to 50 feet in front of me.

This meant I couldn't see things 10 to 15 feet in front of me.

When I realized this, I made "looking ahead" one of my goals. It helps when you drive cars, especially on entrance and exit ramps (my favorites), although it's also useful in parking lots and general street driving. So I practiced looking forward - so much so that I almost turned into the curb on a super hard right turn.

I thought I was going faster than I was and when I turned, I felt sand and grit under the tires. I quickly looked down, saw the curb about a foot away, and corrected my trajectory - the road was another 5 feet down. I was looking to my 4 and 5 o'clock - where the road ended up - until that point, looking 50-100 feet up the road.

My eagerness reined in, I had no further problems on the ride. I kept my head pretty much level, looking down only to spot check wattage, time, or to illuminate my arm (when I signaled a turn).

Another thing that happens when you can't look down too much is that you don't know what gear you're using.

This, I realized, is a good thing.

When you're in a tightly packed field, perhaps on a narrow road, you may not have the luxury of looking down to see if you're in the 18 or the 19. Instead, you shift in a zen fashion - pedals too fast = shift up, pedals too slow = shift down. If you run out of gears, you have to shift both the front and rear at the same time to get the next higher or lower gear. On your own, it's hard to discipline yourself to do this without looking down. At night, it's much easier.

This is because if you look down, the top tube reflects the light pretty strongly and basically blinds you. It's a tame but effective punishment for checking your gears. The same goes for checking your computer.

This means you're at the mercy of how you feel, what you perceive. The sensation you get when riding at night (with a helmet light aimed correctly) is sort of the same as the one you get when you're riding in a field so tightly packed you can't look down.

This is good.

Finally, with very little to distract you visually, you start to use your other senses. For safety, your ears become extremely important. I always knew this for avoiding cars (you can hear around corners you can't see around) but I didn't realize how important hearing is for riding in the peloton until this spring when I felt extremely uncomfortable fighting for position in the field. I happen to get a bit warm so uncovered my right ear. Suddenly I felt like I knew everything that was happening to my right. I still felt uncomfortable to my left. With only a lap to go, I had to uncover my left ear. I took half a lap but as soon as I did it, I could sneak through gaps I was scared of approaching earlier in the race. Hearing is important and riding at night helps reinforce this.

Your sense of touch is amplified. That sand and grit on that acute turn? I might not have noticed it during lighter hours but at night it was a huge alarm bell ringing.

Night riding is also good to test out different gear. Doing a group ride during the day is fun and you get to hang out and stuff but you learn of the uncomfortable seam on your thumb only when you're in the diner and someone says, "Hey, what's that red raw mark on your thumb?". You look and realized, oh, it must be my new gloves.

When you ride at night, any maladjustment, any misfitted clothing becomes apparent immediately to your hypersensitive body. You can tell right away when a long sleeve jersey is actually doing nothing to shield your torso from the wind, or when the wicking material in your jersey gets overloaded with moisture.

Night riding, I realized, is better than just using night hours for getting some training in the legs. It's also a good way to become more fluent in riding your bike.