Tag Archives: cycling

July

A month without posts on the blog can be a sign that my life just became boring, or that it is just so good and my days are so filled with things to do that I simply have no time/energy/psychological need to write. I can assure you that the latter is much closer to reality. But now, having a week of holidays in France, I have some time to sum up things from July.

The main topic of this month was cycling (while I am still working on my second paper, so no big news work-vise, before anyone asks). I set a goal for myself to ride at least 1000 km before climbing the Mont Ventoux somewhen during the last week of the month (see next post soon). I managed that surprisingly easily, with 3-5 trainings per week (mostly my standard 50 km rides before or after working hours, and then one or two rides above 100 km on the weekends or national holidays). I even had company sometimes with the AstroTeam, though they all say that it is impossible to keep up with me, and that my training rides are madness :D I have to admit that hearing these things always make me feel better ;) But now I am really so used to the trainings, that if I don’t ride my road bike for two days, then I really start feeling bad about it, and I really need to hit the road and ride.

On the last weekend before going on holidays, I went on an organised ride (Herent – Landen – Herent) with Tijl, wich would have resulted in reaching the 1000 km goal already before the last week (and the Mont Ventoux) of the month. Unluckily, the ride ended much sooner than expected, as after 20 kilometers (which I later decided to not even count as training for this month), I hit a car. No, I was not hit by a car, I hit a car… It was clearly my fault, we should have given the right to the car turning out onto our road from the right hand side (willing to continue in the direction from where we were coming from), but the fact that it let two other cyclists pass before us confused us for a moment. This moment was long enough for my brain to decide that it will be all right and we will just pass in front of the car as the two other cyclists just did, so I did not start breaking (while Tijl who was more in front already came into almost a full stop). Unluckily, the car driver probably only saw Tijl stopping, so he went on with his original plan of turning out onto the road, and at this point I was too close and way to fast to stop. The rain and the wet roads did not help me either, so missing Tijl just by centimeters, I basically went straight into the side of the turning car with a speed of 33 km/h (data from my GPS log ;P)… Luckily, the car was big, so I could not fly over it, and its side had an angle of 45° relative to my ‘speed vector’ (because it was turning), so I could slide along it during the impact. This probably saved me from a ride to the hospital. I was relatively lucky, because I only hit my knee into the car, and my helmet a bit while I was sliding along the side. With a full frontal impact, it would have been probably much much worse. Unluckily, my front wheel broke (again, damping the impact quite a lot), and the damage is unrepairable – and of course I had the fancy expensive aero-wheels on… But again, no other damage to the bike besides this, which I think is quite unbelievable – given my momentum. Also, the side of the car got seriously bent in (so it was really not a tiny little impact) and scratched, but my insurance will cover that. Tijl helped a lot with filling in the accident report form, and on the afternoon he looked up lots of insurance related stuff for me. As I could not ride any further from this crossroad, I got a ride from the organisers (that’s also a reason why these cyclosportive events are really good…). By the afternoon, my right knee looked like an inflated ball, so – as already as a first thought right after getting up from the ground along with some nice Hungarian swear words – my biggest worry was ‘how am I going to ride up to the Mont Ventoux in less then a week’s time’. Yeah, I was not really shocked by the accident itself. So on the afternoon I took a shower with my bike, and inspected it for further damage (luckily there was nothing), and then spent the rest of the weekend with resting (except for Sunday evening)… But I was quite optimistic about the following week anyway… (Hey, my guardian angel up there, thanks again if you read this.)

Finally this month I made it to Mechelen without my bike, as we had a nice day there with Elise, visiting a photo exhibition, the tower of the cathedral with more than 500 stairs up to a height of almost 100 meters (and with the bells and mechanical parts of the carillon inside – did you know that Belgium has the second highest carillon density over surface area in the World after the Netherlands?), and the city park, plus we have seen the Big Jump event (people raising awareness for the water quality of Belgian rivers by jumping into them) too :)

Then a week later, I made a three course dinner at my place for her (as the main idea was to go and listen to the Daan concert that night, which turned out to be a bit too crowded unluckily), and even though I made everything for the very first time in my life, it was perfect! (I was very proud of myself, as I am not the biggest chef at all…) If I had known that it is so easy to make pancakes, I would have made them every week :D So I made them on Sunday again (ok, a bit less fancy version, but the pancakes were the same) for some of my friends, and they also liked them!

For the rest of the month, I went to the Hungarian embassy in Brussels to make a new passport (took me 5 hours…), saw the last Harry Potter movie (it was OK), and had the experience of hopping on the train after work to arrive in Gent after only one hour, then have dinner (and get invited to the Mont Ventoux) there, and still arrive back to Leuven at a reasonable hour. I could never imagine this happening in Hungary between two big cities ~100 kilometers away from each other with the trains there… Sorry, but this is true. So this was the story of July till the 24th, I will tell you about the last week in the next post!

Keep calm and bike more!

The last three weeks with no cycling had a quite nasty effect on my condition, now I am ~2 km/h slower on average compared to the beginning of June (when – I have to admit – I was in a very good shape). This is not good. But what can I do, I will just ‘Keep calm, and bike more’ – or how was that exactly… (Matching music comes here.)

Visualizing cycling workouts (a.k.a. I love plots!)

Fasten your seat belts, you are about to read one of my best posts ever. (Honestly, it is true.)

I am a bit of a nerd, there is no need to try to deny this fact. I love gadgets, I love technology, and especially, I love plots. I love if they have more than two dimensions, if there is also color or even symbol shapes or sizes used to represent a third or fourth dimension. Moreover, I love GPS devices. At the moment I have a hiking GPS (Garmin GPSMap 60 CSx), a smartphone with built in GPS, and a cycling GPS (Garmin Edge 500), and I had three other ones (two hiking GPS devices, and a bluetooth GPS receiver with my previous Nokia phone) before these… But I am not the nerd who just sits in front of the computer, because I also love sports. I mean, I love doing sports, and not just watching them on TV (which I also like, but this is not the point). If you are not completely new to my blog, then you know that these days I am especially into cycling – this is also the reason why I own a special cycling GPS (which I bought basically on the morning of my first ride with my – back then new – racing bike). With Garmin (and even with other brands), you have the option to upload your workouts to the Garmin Connect website, which gives you some nice overview plots, a calendar, reports, some statistics, and maybe most importantly the ability to share what you have done with the on-line community. The plots and statistics are nice and detailed enough if you are an average – or so called hobby – user. In that case, there is no problem. But if you are such a plot-fetishist as I am, or you need professional analysis, and you have a desire for more, than you will like what I am just about to show after the break. (If you have no food and drinks with you, go and grab something before clicking on continue…) Continue reading →

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New personal best to Mechelen and back

My standard training route is a perfectly flat, ~48 km long section of quite good quality asphalt along the channel (the Dijlekanaal) which connects the city of Leuven with Mechelen. I have ridden it 37 times since I bought my racing bike in February, 2010. It can be very windy, but riding this route is the best (as it is always consistent) and easiest (no cars, very few crossroads, good infrastructure, and starts very close to my place) way to see how trained I am. If I push as hard as I can, and there is not too much wind, then my average speed will reflect the level of my fitness. Basically this is my individual time trial course. My seasonal best (SB) for 2010 was set on the 7th of June, with an average speed of 33.95 km/h (this value differs a bit from what can be seen on Garmin Connect, but it is more precise, believe me – and you will see in the next post, how did I get it). Now this year I had a quite different training strategy, with additional low intensity rides and interval workouts, instead of the mostly strictly high intensity rides of last year, when I almost always tried to break my previous record. The reason for this is that 1) it is better to train like this, and 2) it got really stressing after some time that I never managed to break my record from June, so I realised that I should not try to always break my record if I do not want to demotivate myself. There is also no point of going for a record, if I do not feel perfectly fit, if the wind is stronger than 10 km/h, or if the temperature is too high/low, because now I have reached the point when it is not that easy to break a record, so I need perfect or near optimal conditions to try – if I also want to have chance for succeeding. So far this year I only tried once, but too early in the season, so I have failed miserably (I thought the aerodynamic wheels would do the job just by themselves, but this is not true at all – of course). But now after all the training I had on La Palma, I really felt strong, and as the weather forecast was perfect (temperature in the low twenties, and a wind of maximum 5-10 km/h), and I had a feeling that I had already recovered after the hard rides of the Canaries, I had to try it. So on Wednesday after work I left with the goal of setting a new personal best on the Leuven – Mechelen – Leuven course. On the way towards Mechelen I had a slight tailwind, and I felt really good; my cadence was high, I had no ‘difficult’ breathing at a constant high heart rate of 180-183 BPM, and I could relatively easily concentrate on keeping the pace high without getting distracted by any doubtful thoughts (because sometimes that’s the worst, when you don’t feel perfect, and you start thinking about it, doubting that you will be able to hold this speed for long). This way I was riding with typically 37-39 km/h, and I have arrived to Mechelen with a personal best split time. My average speed was 36.5 km/h (because at crossroads I have to slow down to basically 0, and this have a huge impact on the average) when I turned back (after my usual short stop) towards Leuven. I knew that I had a very good first leg, but I was not sure if it was because of the slight help from the wind, or because my training on La Palma was really this useful. So I was very curious how will I perform against the wind (and a bit afraid what if it was just the wind – as it would have not been the first time in history). But it was relatively easy, I really do not remember if I have ever felt this comfortable (relatively speaking, as you never feel comfortable after keeping your heart rate above 180 BPM for an hour) while riding against the headwind. After the first kilometers it became clear that if I do not make a big mistake, then this will be a new record. As my speed was typically 35-37 km/h during this stage, I knew that the final average would be lower than what I saw at the turn-around point, but still much better, than my best time from 2010. And knowing that I can make it, and that the end result can be really good helped me a lot psychologically. Because there are moments when there is a stronger gust, and then you need to push against the wind with a much higher power to keep a steady speed, and it is very easy to loose the rhythm when this happens if your mind is not devoted or concentrated enough. In the last 15 km I just tried to keep my cadence at or near 100 RPM, and go without thinking about anything else (except for drinking frequently enough, because that’s very important). So at the end, I crossed the imaginary finish line completely exhausted, knowing that I really gave the maximum I could. Then I looked down to the screen of my Garmin Edge 500, and it displayed an average speed more than 1.5 km/h better, than what I had on the 7th of June in 2010. After a very easy (and extremely happy) ride home (from the end of the channel, where the imaginary finish line lies), I got to know my final, ‘official’ average speed, setting my new personal best (PB) at 35.70 km/h (individual TT on 48.06 km, not closed roads, no TT bike). An improvement of 1.75 km/h! For me this was a success as big as riding up twice to the Roque de los Muchachos on one day. In the second half of last year I tried so much to break the record without succeeding, that I really started to think that I had set it in such perfect conditions (it is true that the weather was even better than now), that I would never be able to break it again. And now, such an improvement, it is still almost unbelievable. I really am very happy about it! :)

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Cycling on La Palma – Day 4

On Saturday I again took the day off, just watching the Giro d’Italia, and eating :) Somehow I could also enjoy these rest days, just by really not doing anything. Though these days were a little bit lonely… Anyway, for Sunday I planned an easier ride to finish nicely my cycling holidays on La Palma. Of course when I say easier it is very relative. Because indeed, easier than biking up twice to the Roque de los Muchachos, but compared to that, everything might seem easy. But keep reading, and you will see what I am talking about ;) After getting up at 9:30, I only managed to leave a bit before twelve – partly because it was raining, partly because it was so good to just lay down in the couch :D First, I had the same short climb as on Day 1:

6.59 km @ 5.6% with a maximum over 100 meters of 8.8% (3rd category)

Though I felt like making a good effort, I was a bit slower than on the first day. But I guess it is ok after such a week on the bike. Then after a short near flat section, the big climb (up to El Pilar on LP-203, though I think the road numbering is not the same in real life anymore) of the day started at km 10.41:

14.17 km @ 8.0% with a maximum over 100 meters of 12.9% (HC)

I was not avare of the fact that it will be this hard. I though it would be a 1st category climb, with a much less steep gradient, so I was a bit surprised when I had to face reality. But it was a world class ascent. The worst part was between km 7 and 12 with the following gradients (over 1 km): 9.5, 10.8, 9.3, 9.0 and 10.1 percent. And to make things worse, as I entered the cloud layer around the elevation of approximately 800 meters (so around the beginning of the really steep part), the visibility dropped to 100 meters, and the temperature to 11°C.

At the end of the steep section I have passed another cyclist (who was way older, so not because I would climb like Contador – at least I don’t feel the effect of the Spanish ham too much :D), with whom I had a short chat when he also arrived to the top. It turned out, that he works at the TNG, so it was a day of astronomers on bike ;) He also took a picture of me on the ‘summit’.

It was cold, in the middle of a pine tree forest, with water everywhere. Clearly 100% humidity. So I put on all my warm clothes for the descent (buying that rain jacket was a huge life-saving idea of mine when I ordered some bike stuff on-line the last time), and started rolling down. I could not see anything from the cloud, the visibility was around 50 meters. I had to put on my flashing red rear lights, though cars could not go faster either… And I was freezing like hell (oxymoron warning here). So from almost 1500 meter ASL I went down to almost 800 m ASL, where I turned right onto LP-202 (again, I believe this is not the real designation anymore, but this is written on my map), to climb up to La Cumbrecita:

5.99 km @ 7.8% with a maximum over 100 meters of 12.7% (2nd category)

At the beginning of the road a sign said that the path to the caldera is closed, but I kept going. Luckily when I reached the entrance of the national park, the lady at the barrier said that I can go in (and by the time I was coming back, the barriers were even open). This was the smoothest stretch of road which I have climbed this week, perfect asphalt, though only one and a half lane wide. Perfectly enough for me ;)

At the beginning the road was quite straight, climbing higher and higher on the left side of the valley among the so often seen pine trees of the island. A system of tubes carried down the freshwater from higher parts of the natural reserve along the road, and they were leaking here and there, but because of the tremendously high pressure, these leaks appeared as fountains of several meters high ;) The steepest one kilometer had a gradient of 11%, and that was the point where the road got very curvy.

Unluckily the top was again in the cloud layer, so instead of the amazing view to the inside of the caldera I saw a grey wall and nothing else beyond :(

But it was a very nice climb, so it was worth going up. And the downhill was also very nice on the smooth and quite straight road ;) Then already after leaving the pine tree forest and the national park behind, I had a short period of sunshine when I could look back towards the caldera, but that’s the most I have seen that day.

From here, I still had to climb back to El Pilar, up into the cold clouds, and now even facing the chilly and strong headwind. But it was the last climb.

10.69 km @ 5.9% with a maximum over 100 meters of 10.2% (2nd category)

Luckily this side of the mountain was much easier, though the wind and cold made it a bit miserable. Also the road quality here was a bit below European standards. Unluckily I could not see too much of the numerous volcanic calderas which I have passed here, because all what I could make out was the grey slopes right next to me, but the rest was lost in the mist. I have to admit the situation had a special atmosphere, because the moving (more and less dense) clouds created the illusion of volcanic smoke. Again, on the top it was not more than 11°C, so the descent was freaking cold. And because of the low visibility (50-100 meters all the way down till 750 m ASL) and the wet and steep road, I had to be very careful and break a lot. I did not enjoy it that much… But as soon as I came out of the cloud layer, it was a nice roll all the way to Santa Cruz (where I even had a bit of sunshine to close the day in a sunny mood).

So I finished my last day on La Palma with 82.8 km and 2645 meters of elevation gain (and a pizza of course, as every day this week :D). Yeah, ‘easy day’ :D GPS details here. Luckily I specifically asked for a later connection in Madrid knowing that it is impossible to make it with IBERIA if you only have 55 minutes of transfer time, because now I am sitting in the airport of Tenerife, and we already have a delay of one hour… Yeah IBERIA, damn it!

Thanks for reading, this was the last part :)

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