Packet pickup and pasta

This week has flown by.  On Wednesday we went to the El Tour Fitness Expo to pick up our rider's packet.  It has our numbers (7351 and 7352) and our little ankle race timer thingy.  The expo was pretty cool.  Greg got an 2009 El Tour Jersey and some cycling socks.  I loaded up on Tram bars and Shot bloks at Mac's booth.  We also got a lot of cute freebies from the UMC booth.  Sunscreen, blinky lights, bandaids, water bottles, key chains, etc.

On Friday we went to the BTE pasta party.  It was fun to hang out with all our group ride buddies...although it was pretty difficult to recognize some of them in plain clothes.  I got the low down on all the hard parts of the race.  Everyone says that the 66 milers (that us) have to ride the hardest part of the tour, but the only scary part I haven't ridden already is Snyder Hill.  Who cares though. If I have to walk it...I walk it.  Bring it on!

We head to the starting line in one hour and 15min.  Wish us luck today!  May the wind be at our backs and our tires never flat.

Next stop: El Tour

Back in the saddle again.  Sorry for the forced hiatus.  I was at the 14th International Conference on Harmful Algae in Hersonissos, Crete.  It was a great trip.

Sadly, it was my first week completely bike free since August. Then I caught a cold! Finally got back on my bike today for the last BTE group ride before El Tour.  We met at 6:30 am to ride the upper portion of the tour route.  It was cold out...for Tucson.  Greg and I need our winter cycling gear asap.  Everyone was all bundled up with their leg warmers and arm warmers and ear warmers and toe warmers.  Lucky for Greg, he was able to pick up a nice wind breaker at the Bike Swap yesterday.  Unfortunately for me, they didn't have my size.

I can't remember the last time my toes were that cold.  They were little toe-cicles that felt like they were going to snap off my foot with every bump in the road.  Mac suggested I try putting a layer of plastic wrap between my socks and shoes next time.  Galen recommends duct tape over the shoes.  Those ideas sound good, but a nice pair of neoprene toe warmers for christmas sounds even better.

We rode 56 miles!  That's only 10 less than El Tour.  And poor Greg was getting over the flu.  He was bedridden Wednesday through Friday.  What a trooper.

The Commuter

There was a time, before the Nishiki, when Greg had an aluminum bike that was too big for him.  I wasn't ridding my Raleigh, so he stole it from me.  That wasn't a big deal to me at the time because I was out of shape and didn't want to ride the thing anyway.  Still, one must have a bike just incase, so we picked up a 1984 Club Fuji for me.  I never rode the Fuji either because it had down tube friction shifters and wasn't pretty.  Some crazy person at one point had wrapped all the cable housing in electrical tape, which became all sticky and gross looking.

In the end, Greg got his Nishiki and I went back to the Raleigh and the Fuji was looking like just a waste of money...until BTE.  Now all I can think about are bikes.  If my advisor ever found this site and saw how much time I was spending on this new passion...eh he probably wouldn't care too much.

Now that I'm crazy into cycling, I need two bikes, one for races and weekend rides (the Thoroughbred) and another for hauling things to and from work and shopping (the Clydesdale).  Enter the neglected Fuji.  We picked up some sora components on ebay, new cables and housing, awesome yellow handlebar tape, a pannier, and here she is.

My first grocery run on the Fuji.  Chicken breasts, cereal, milk, pasta, tomatoes, garlic, onion, and mushrooms

Are four bikes a bit excessive for two people? Maybe, but I think we're making some really positive lifestyle changes.  And we are thinking very seriously about selling the CR-V and going back to being a one car family.  Stay tuned.

BTE yard sale success

We are half way to our fundraising goal!  Big thanks to everyone who sent us their treasures (a.k.a. useless crap) to sell at the yard sale today.  People ate it up.  We started the day with two tables overflowing with nicknacks and a full row of boxes of books underneath.  By the end of the day, we only had three printer boxes of stuff left.  I wish I'd taken before and after photos for the blog...I'm sure it would have been riveting for you all.

If I could use the ongoing currency war as an analogy for the day's yard sale prices...it was Greg and me as China versus everyone else as the world.  What can I say?  I'm from the W. R. Hughes school of yard sale prices...just get rid of it fast.

In the end we raised (drumroll please) $136

Score!

Oro Valley to Oracle

It's getting chilly out there!  Well, chilly for Tucson.  We sported long sleeves for this 42 mile Saturday ride with Tami and Nancy.  The BTE yard sale is this weekend.  So the four of us headed out a day early in order to make big fundraising bucks tomorrow morning.  We started at the Home Depot up in Oro Valley.  A lot of other groups were meeting up there as well.

Look at that 20 mile climb!  So much fun.

The ride out was a steady uphill schlog with no places to rest out of the saddle while coasting in order to rest one's backside.  However, I am probably a little too pleased to announce that I FINALLY figured out how to comfortably stand and pedal while standing.  I rock!  See, I told you I was too pleased.  It may sound like no big deal to you, but seriously folks, before, I would try to stand and climb, take two wobbly and weak pedal strokes, and pretty much fall back down into the saddle...pathetic.  But not anymore.  The trick for me was shifting into a higher chain ring in the front to increase resistance...oh and going to all those spin classes to build up my leg muscles.

The ride back was crazy fast.  I think Greg and I were coasting at about 25 mph most of the way.  We both felt like we could have ridden another 20 miles easy.  Bring on the Tour!

Old Spanish to Colossal Cave

Greg here. Today's training ride was the longest ride either of us has ever been on. Forty-three miles. It was a blast. The BTE group headed out with Mac from his shop Sabino Cycles at 7 AM. I think the email the BTE cyclists received last week from Mac served as a warning because there ended up being only 10 riders in the group. We took the same route as a few of our previous training rides, riding along Old Spanish Trail, but continued all the way up Pistol Hill out at Colossal Cave Mountain Park.

I also rode my new bike on this ride... Wait, did I say new bike? Yes I did. You might remember the multiple posts before about the improvements to my beloved Nishiki Cresta. Well that bike is still awesome, but Jen and I want to set up a couple bikes as commuters/utility bikes to get groceries and such. The Cresta has rack mounts and long chainstays making it ideal for this use. Plus, the number of bikes a person needs is equal to n + 1, where n is the number of bikes the person currently owns. So on Friday night we went on a little drive to Phoenix and picked up a 1999 Cannondale R500 that is virtually in brand new condition.

Jen here now:  Greg didn't tell you half of the exciting things that happened on this ride.  First, he's smoking fast on his new bike.  When we were first dating, I would get a little competitive/hurt when it was obvious he was better than me...glad I'm over that!  He slows down and waits for me sometimes, which is sweet.  I enjoyed cruising along out to Saguaro East, chatting with Greg, taking in the views, along a route that kicked my ass a month ago.

The ride out to Pistol Hill was described by a fellow rider as a false flat, meaning the road appears nearly flat, but you're climbing.  She wasn't kidding.  I think I was averaging only 9 mph.  On the way back we helped another rider fix a flat, which gave me confidence for fixing my own flat someday.  Back at Sabino Cycles, Mac worked on the new bike for Greg.  A decade of dried/crusty grease can really mess with your shifting.  Thanks Mac!

We had to deal with quite a few angry drivers today, which was disconcerting considering we rode past a ghost bike (a memorial for a fallen cyclist).  The motorists were mostly upset about cyclists riding two abreast, even when there was plenty of room for the car to pass.  They'd yell or honk or drive as close as they could to the white edge line.  That's how people die...  Anyway, it was sad and frustrating because, apparently unbeknownst to many Tucsonan rednecks, cyclists can lawfully ride two abreast ARS 28-815.  So the next time you pass a cyclist, show them some love and give them the 5ft of clearance they deserve...oops, not that you're a redneck...whoever you are.  You know what I mean.

I'm stepping off my soap box now.  Jen out.

Oro Valley loop

There are a couple of places on El Tour route that scare me a little bit.  Oracle road up through Oro Valley is one of them.  It's about a quarter of the way into the ride, it's uphill, and I know there is a long downhill section ahead.  I tell myself that if I can make it through Oro Valley, I have the tour in the bag.

Today we rode that scary section...in reverse, so the hills were more in our favor.  There was still quite a bit of climbing...the most climbing I've ever done actually.

This is a route I like to call Up and Around in Oro Valley.

I had my new 155mm shorty crank arms to test out.  They are supposed to make it a bit easier for vertically challenged people like me to keep a higher cadence and put less strain on the knees.  I think they worked beautifully, and I love them.  I can really feel myself improving every week.  I'm using parts of my lungs I didn't even know I had!

We took in some amazing views around the 14 mile mark.  I made Greg stop and take a picture.

Tucson is way off in the distance behind me.  What do you think of my fancy new cycling shorts?  Remember my pretty-in-pink-first-group-ride outfit?  I think I look awesome now :)

We averaged 14.5 mph and went 29.5 miles.  I just want to give a shout out to my fantastic husband.  Greg, I can't believe we're doing this, and I feel so lucky to be sharing these rides with you.

Posture makes perfect

We all met up at O2 modern fitness for a bike fit clinic.  Kurt mostly talked about how to sit correctly rather than look at everyone individually and tell them what's wrong with their bike. Greg and I had already been working at getting our bikes set up properly, so I welcomed the advice on proper posture.  Here are the two most important things I learned from the bike fit clinic:

1) Having a flat back does not mean holding your back like you're sitting up straight.  You want your lower back to be flat on the bike.  Slump a little on the bike and engage your abs...perfect.

2) Keeping your knees as close to the bike as possible makes you use more of your upper leg muscles and makes climbing more bearable.  After the clinic we went for a ride.

Downtown to Camino de Oeste and back

Wow what a difference a little change in position makes!  I felt one with the bike.  Kurt, the bike fit expert, had nothing for me except, "You have perfect cycling posture."  I was so proud.  There was a gradual uphill bit from mile 12 to the end.  I was fighting a headwind, but managed to catch up to another rider.  We talked about the tour, all the while fighting a headwind going up and up.  She started to sound a little winded, and I realized I wasn't...I just kept going.  I wanted to shout, "Hey everybody! Look at this! I'm not winded!"  I kept it all inside but picked up the pace so I could catch up with Greg and tell him how great I was feeling.  He was happy for me, obviously.  We finished the route front of the pack.

The lethargic week

I think I over trained...

I started to feel pretty worn down during my Saturday spin class.  By the end of our group ride on Sunday, I was positively wiped.  Breakfast club spinning on Saturday was still awesome, don't get me wrong.  I got a free O2 water bottle, and, as the class name would suggest, a free breakfast.

The group ride was my longest ride ever! 29 miles!  We went out to some market between Saguaro East and Colossal Cave, fighting a 20 mph headwind the whole way.  I started to get grouchy when my bike computer read 13+ miles and we still hadn't turned around yet. "Mac said 25 miles today, this is going to be more like 30, I'm tired, I'm sore, I already rode a lot this week, grumble, grumble, grumble"

Food and water at the break really turned my spirits around.  I joking complained to the group about the extra miles.  Mac just laughed and said sometimes the group leader has to lie about the ride.  What a little trickster!  On the ride back I had to tackle my first real hill.  I attacked it with gusto, even trying to stand up, but immediately sat back down after about two pedal strokes.  By the time I was almost to the top, I was in my granniest of gears going about 5 mph, but I made it.

Oh and a bug flew in Greg's mouth and bit/stung his tongue multiple times.  He laughed it off, so I can laugh too...Ha!

My rest day turned into a rest week, which is really lame.  More rides planned for this weekend, so hopefully that will get me moving again.

Long time no blog

Been too busy riding to blog!  Seriously!  

First things first.  Big shout out to the wonderful folks who sent us our first donations!  We are a tenth of the way toward reaching our goal!  As my favorite talking bike likes to say, cancer is the biggest douchebag of all.  We can help fight it.  

I'm going to try to back off the exclamation marks from here on out...but not the ellipsis... ...

We (Greg and I, not the royal we) went to an introductory spinning class at O2 Modern Fitness last Saturday.  Spinning is indoor cycling.  An instructor helps you set your cadence and resistance and keeps you from slacking off.  Sweating and fun were maximized to the extreme.  I LOVED it.  I could focus on my cadence and my breath, relaxing the shoulders, tightening my core, etc. without worrying about getting run over or left behind.

AND I already saw an improvement during our second group ride on Sunday.  The other ladies had nothing on me.  No sickness.  I attacked those baby hills like the infants that they were.  Greg and I actually finished the ride first by a good ten minutes.  Somehow we got separated right before the turn around point.  I thought he had gotten lost, and he thought I had a flat tire.  We both headed back to look for each other, met up, and kept going.  Leaving everyone else in the dust.  Oh and Greg's frankenstein bike rocked.

We get a week free at the O2 the spinning gym to try out their other classes.  I've gone to three others and really enjoyed getting my rear kicked in all of them.  

Jen out

Bike Mods

Hi there,

It's Greg again, and I'm here to tell you that Frankenstein's monster has come to life. Now I can shift from the handlebars; I have a new (albeit low-end) compact crankset so I can handle hills better; and I have dual pivot brakes so I can hopefully come to a stop. Behold:

First group ride

As you may know.  I've been dealing with an outer ear infection since Wednesday...not fun.  And Greg's been in Phoenix since Thursday so I haven't even been coddled.  But I wasn't going to let those two bummers stop me from going on my first BTE group ride today!

This is me at 6:30 in the morning.  A little nervous.  A little doped up on Tylenol.  A little pink.

I need better cycling clothes.  Anyway, our fearless leader is named Mac.  He owns Sabino Cycles, and started out as a biology major in undergrad.  He switched to business after intro chemistry.  I told him we lose a lot of good biologists that way.  Everyone was super nice and peppy.  Here's an example.  I told one woman that I'd never done any hill climbing before and that I don't know what I'm going to do on the tour.  She said, "You're gonna have fun, that's what you're going to do!"  Like I said, really nice.

I bought cycling gloves because I thought that would make me look pro.  Rode less than a mile and decided they were terrible.  Bummer right?  I also think my seat is too far forward and that I'm putting too much weight on my arms.

We rode out to Saguaro East and back.  The last two miles of loopy baby hills started to take their toll on  me.  I started to wonder if yogurt was the best pre-ride breakfast. (If you have good pre-ride breakfast ideas, I want to hear em. I already have bananas on the list.) While we were resting at Saguaro the same woman handed me a granola bar.  I tried to eat it but was feeling pretty queazy.

I'm going to stop there...if you want to hear what happened next, ask my Mom.  Lets just say those guys were champs, and I got over my queasiness!  Another woman gave me chocolate milk.  Note to self: bring lots of tasty snacks to share next time.

The ride back was beautiful and fast.  Can't wait to get back out there.

Has anyone donated to BTE yet?  As soon as you do I'll start a $$$ counter right next to my crash and burn counter!

Rillito River bike path

Happy Labor Day everyone!

We went on a 13 mile ride up to the Rillito River bike path and back.

The improved bike lane on Mountain Ave. was awesome.  We were practically flying.  It felt like when you put flippers on in the pool.  I'm also finding bike riding to be really good for my ego.  Right after topping out at 25 mph (that's fast for me), I tip over like a noob at the next stop light on account of my new pedals.  Here's what you do:  hop up, tell your hubby you're all right, and then smile really big so the cars across the street know you are in on the joke.

Bike Mods to Come

Greg here,

My 1983 Nishiki Cresta has a very sweet double butted Tange No. 2 chromoly frame, but old school friction shifting components. In fact, the guy I bought the bike from had converted it to a single speed. He could not find the original Suntour Cyclone Mk II components so I was given an assortment of Shimano parts. Right now I have it shifting smoothly but I really miss indexed shifting with "brifters" (where the brake lever and shifters are combined so you can shift without taking you hands away).

This old Nishiki touring bike is replacing an aluminum Specialized that was a little too big for me. Fortunately, the Specialized has a Shimano 105 groupset in acceptable condition. I'm having this group switched over to the Nishiki later this week. It's going to be a brand new bike. Here's a before photo:

Season 11 kick-off event and expo

Jen here again.  I promise I'll get Greg to post eventually....

We went to the BTE season 11 kick-off event last night and had a great time.  I felt more than a little guilty as I skipped the veggie hors d'oeuvres and went straight for a cookie.  You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make her drink.

The coolest vender there was O2 Modern Fitness, a spinning indoor cycling studio.  They have stationary trainers, so we can bring our own bikes to their classes, which is pretty neat.  I'm going to try and talk Greg into going to an intro spinning class on Saturday.  One table over from O2 was the Mount Lemmon Marathon, the self-proclaimed "toughest road marathon in the world."  I smiled and tried to look sincere when I took the guy's flier.  Sounds like fun right...yeah no, not in a million years.

After that there was a vender raffle, and Greg and I both won!  Duplicate prizes! What are the odds, huh?  We both got tiny women's athletic shirts from Pike Athletics (Ellen, one of these shirts has your name on it) AND complementary "Strength and Conditioning Sessions" AND complementary "Functional Movement Screens."  I don't know what those are, but they sound expensive.  Kinda looking forward to that...kinda not.  


I won an extra prize too!  Guess what it was.  Free entry to the Mount Lemmon Marathon!  Yay!  I gave that away.  My legs and lungs were burning just holding the certificate.


All in all a good experience.  My friend Crystal has been doing BTE for years now and she said, "nothing is more motivating that struggling to keep up with 70 year old cancer survivors."  I would have to agree with her on that.  There were some pretty inspiring people in the audience.  Looking forward to getting to know some of them better. 

Oh Snap! New Stuff!

Jen here.

Someone's got new shoes and pedals...me!  That's right, I'm going clipless.

Clipless pedals are a bit of a misnomer, because, while you do technically clip into the bike pedal, you do so without the aid of toe-clips...an earlier invention.  Hence the name...clipless.

Introducing my super cool new cycling shoes.  I was thinking I'd go with a mountain bike shoe because they can be easier to walk in.  In the end, I went with these streamlined Scattante roadies.  They won in the comfort and dainty-ness departments.

The cleat attaches to the bottom of the shoe and engages the pedal while riding. This allows for more pedaling power.  I picked out the Speedplay Frogs because I saw them referred to as clipless pedals for dummies.  That's the scary part about clipless pedals.  If you don't disengage the pedals when you come to a stop...you'll fall over.

See how they can hold you in place?

Shall I start a counter to track how many times I fall?

The Idea

We've been so lazy lately.  It's the best part of the year for getting up early, but we just can't do it.  I don't know if Greg sees it this way or not, but I think we're both playing chicken.  Here's a sample of my internal talk "Who will get up and make coffee?  I'm not gonna do it.  But if we don't get up soon, we'll be late.  Greg should do it.  He's just waiting for me to get up.  Well, I'm going to wait for him to get up"  And so it's gone for months now, and we're missing the best part of the day.  I think we're both pretty desperate to change our habits, but so far...no luck.

I know this isn't the best way to start off a blog, but I hope to look back on this first post and think, "Wow, we were being lazy slugs...but look at us now."  A girl can hope.

Anyway, thanks to all this time spent in bed, we've been listening to a lot of Morning Edition.  It was on Arizona Spotlight that I heard the announcement that got me so excited that I felt compeled to start a stupid blog that no one is going to read. Hopefully, no one is going to read this....

Here's the idea.  To get out of the doldrums, to get in shape, to gain confidence, to stay out of trouble, and to help fight cancer....we're going to ride in the 66 mile portion of El Tour De Tucson.

Why the surprised look?  Do you doubt our abilities?  Well maybe you have a point there, which is why we are also going to join the Better Than Ever Program (BTE) at the Arizona Cancer Center.

It looks like a super cool and inspiring gig.  Here's the deal.  Participants register for an upcoming cycling, walking, or running event (in our case El Tour).  BTE organizes weekly group training sessions and socials to help us get ready for the event and make exercising a part of our daily lives.  In exchange we pledge to raise money for cancer research.  It's a win win!

So that's the plan.  We sign our lives away next Wednesday.  Wonder where we'll be in November...