July Rides

[ny biker]

Emily, I did not realize that it gets so hot in Washington state.

Re: riding day after day, I think another aspect of it is pace. If you ride a moderate pace that you can sustain without feeling tired at the end, I would think you'd be better able to feel good riding again the next day. I say "I would think" because I haven't actually tested this theory. But I do know that when I ride on my own or with faster riders, I generally start out fast and then slow way down toward the end because my legs get achy and tired. When I ride with friends who do lots of touring, we usually ride a more steady pace that seems slow to me. But at the end of either type of ride, my average speed is not very different, but I feel better after the steady pace rides.

Anyway, I rode about 35 miles yesterday with a few friends. I designed the route, and it was supposed to be 49 miles in all, but one friend didn't feel well after about 28 miles so we took a short cut back to the start. She said she took a salt tablet, and the only other time she's ever taken these particular tablets she also felt sick. But her main problem was a fast heart beat, which I don't see on the list of symptoms when I do a search on "hypernatremia." She also thought there was caffeine in the salt tablets, so maybe that caused the problem. Anyway, it was also hot and humid, so we stopped for a long time in the shade and took our time finishing the ride, and afterwards we gave her ice packs that a couple of us had in coolers in our cars, and she drank lots of water and ate some mixed nuts, and we sat in the shade while waiting for a family member that she called to drive her home. Her heart rate returned to normal, but she still felt weak and fuzzy-headed until about 5 hours later, which was also about the time she started to pee a lot. So I don't know exactly what was in those tablets, but we all agreed she should throw the rest of the them away.

I was actually happy to cut the ride short, since I had just returned from 8 days vacation in California and I was very tired from jet lag. My legs felt pretty weak when we first started the ride, and we were maintaining a pretty good pace so I was feeling tired by the time we were halfway through our planned route. It would have been one of those start fast/end slow days for me even if my friend had been feeling fine. And it felt hotter than the weather forecast had indicated, maybe because it had been hot in California but not nearly as humid.

Today I took advantage of Trek's annual TdF sale and bought new water bottle cages for my bike. There's nothing wrong with the old ones, but they are black, and I think white ones will look better with the plum handlebar tape that I recently got for my new handlebars. I'm planning to donate the old handlebars to the nonprofit bike shop that works with local teenagers, so I'll probably donate the black bottle cages to them, too.

[emily_in_nc]

Emily, I did not realize that it gets so hot in Washington state.

I didn't either, being from NC and spending most of my life there. And most of what you hear about Washington focuses on the Seattle area, where it is indeed cool much of the time -- though they're having a heatwave at the moment too.

When we started researching coming out here for the summer, we discovered that Washington has a very different climate depending on whether you are east or west of the Cascades. West of the mountains it's much cooler, rainier, and more humid because of the marine influences from the Pacific Ocean. East of the Cascades is actually "high desert", dry, sunny, and hot in the summer -- it has a "Mediterranean" climate.

My DH loves hot and sunny weather, so that's primarily why we're here. The road cycling is excellent, with roads of lightly traveled farm roads in the valley, and challenging hill climbs in the hills/foothills surrounding Walla Walla if you're so inclined. The scenery is gorgeous.

I have a lot of rides like the type you mention, where I start off fast (riding with DH), feel great, and end up riding solo and slow at the end. DH rides more miles than me, so we usually split up on the return trip so he can do longer loops, and I can get done sooner than him. Some of the sluggishness near the end of the ride is due to the heat building up during the ride just making it harder, but sometimes I don't eat or drink enough during the ride, and I trying to work on that.

[Crankin]

I start slow and always end up feeling better at the end. In fact, I often end up finishing a group ride before riders that are overall faster than me.
One of the reasons I stopped doing certain group rides is that they all go out like bats out of hell. DH and I have learned that on many of the shorter rides we do, we often start off climbing, go slowly, and by the time we get back to the flatter part of the loop, we can get our averages up about +2 mph.
If people think this is wimpy, well, it works.

[jilliebeanmn]

You ladies put on some MILES!

My "long" rides on the weekend are 20-30 miles, and my weeknight rides are 15-20.

I did 25 miles on the trail yesterday and it was a PERFECT biking weather day. If not for a packed day, leaving very little time in my schedule I definitely would have went further. I am such a newbie.

My biggest problem with rides over 2 hours is my back ends up killing me. I think I am going to try and move my seat down a little and see if that helps.

[ny biker]

You ladies put on some MILES!

My "long" rides on the weekend are 20-30 miles, and my weeknight rides are 15-20.

I did 25 miles on the trail yesterday and it was a PERFECT biking weather day. If not for a packed day, leaving very little time in my schedule I definitely would have went further. I am such a newbie.

My biggest problem with rides over 2 hours is my back ends up killing me. I think I am going to try and move my seat down a little and see if that helps.

Moving your seat down could cause knee problems. What kind of bike do you have -- hybrid, road, mountain, other?

[jilliebeanmn]

2014 Cannondale Quick-a hybrid with flat handlebars.

[emily_in_nc]

Today I did 47 on the roadie and 2.5 afterwards on the Bike Friday w/panniers to get groceries.

My DH finds the end of our rides here hard too -- I think it's a combination of chip-seal roads near the end, a slight but very long "false flat" back to our rental, and the fact that by the time we're heading in, it's HOT. Today was 88 when I finished up, and I was dripping from every pore. The last 5 miles or so were a grind, but I did it.

I am proud because I achieved 4000 miles on the year today. I have a lot more time to ride now that I'm retired, and it's looking like this will easily beat my previous record year of 2004, where I did 4279 miles, but a good % of those were trainer miles. Living in NC at the time and being a cold-weather wimp, I rode almost exclusively on the trainer from Nov-Feb and occasionally outside those months as well. Now we're able to follow good weather, so getting in outdoor miles is much easier.

[ny biker]

2014 Cannondale Quick-a hybrid with flat handlebars.

You might want to try posting in the Health forum for advice. It could be a problem with reach, which might be fixed by a different size stem or different handlebars. But it also might be an issue with core strength or flexibility. When my lower back hurts, it means I need to stretch my hamstrings.