Just back from a nice ride up to Beal`s Point at Folsom Lake. I took the camera and left the Garmin at home, so I have some nice pics, but no telemetry to fret over. It was a nice change to just go have fun and endulge in some speed, damned the HR and fatigue. Although I think I was just using a strong moment in the ride, I don't really know, don't really cared, and enjoyed the freedom to not worry about it, but just enjoy the cold dense air in my lungs, wind in my face and pavement flashing by.
A note on that. Your pancreas doesn't make insulin at the same rate all the time, even when you are going flat out. It makes insulin on a 6-minute cycle. My take on this is your body pings, somewhat like a submarine. It pumps out a lot of insulin, floods your blood with the stuff, and then monitors how fast it gets used up, and/or how much blood glucose is left at the end of 6 minutes. It then adjusts the quantity in the next 6-minute dose accordingly.
Since insulin is a hormone which dramatically increases the rate at which your muscles (and adipose tissue if at rest) can absorb glucose, you get little spurts and sags when you ride. One of the very real advantages of riding in groups is you can make good use of individual rider's surges to pull others in sag mode.
Time to fetch my baked potato out of the microwave, mash it up with canola oil and sour cream, and get some glucose into those hungry muscles so they don't start chewing on themselves. With a glycemic index of 105 potatoes are the bees knees for recovery carbs. I like mine with 32 oz of skim milk. Really hits the spot!
I hope you enjoy the pics. They almost do the scenery justice. The snow in the Sierras in the background will be water in the lake by May or June.
Well, as usually happens, I dragged a toe riding last week, so I got out the duct tape and 'armored' the toe box area of the shoe. About 5-6" wrapped across the toe area, applied so the tape tapered downward towards the sole at both ends, worked quite well. I snipped some slits in the tape at 1" intervals on the bottom side so it would wrap/fold around the toe nicely, and the effect is very pleasing. This basically mimics the rubber reinforcement in the toe box area of any tennis shoe.
I rode with this some 40 miles to my HammerinWheels birthday party on Saturday and got a lot of feedback. Some seem to think it looks 'dorky', so if that's your take, just buy some cheap Lycra shoe covers to make it all look pretty. You will give up the high viz property of the outer reflective surface, but that may be a good trade-off to some.
The reflective side that matters is the side that faces inward, and it will be just as wind and waterproof as ever, so no issues. The versatility of this system is one of its great strengths. If it were thicker or heavier, that wouldn't be true, but as it is, it can be the perfect base layer for those riding in really COLD weather.
I checked, and you can buy Thinsulate in small quantities online. I will find a link and post it when I get time. Btw, if you want to save gas, and make your car heater and AC much more effective, put this stuff between the door panel and door gasket. It also kills a ton of road noise. Time to head out the door and 'get some' right now.
Merry Christmas to you all, and thank you for all the wonderful feedback over the last year. All the best to you and yours.
This is so effective it's just stupid. Almost weightless, costless and super-tough, it works well alone or under booties. In thinking about materials used in booties I have to say, they are very poorly chosen. Neoprene? Are you kidding me? Very heavy, not very windproof, and because of the density of rubber, a poor insulator.
Once wet, neoprene is as cold as cotton. Worse, it stays wet and conducts, evaporates and convects your feet into icicles. (It takes at least 8hrs to dry a 7mm wetsuit on a warm day) It has an R value ~ 0.5 per inch of thickness. Thinsulate under this stuff would be pretty good, which is why it's the material of choice for SCUBA dry-suits.
Here's a table I found for the R value of Thinsulate Ultra. As you can see, it would take over 5 inches of neoprene to match Ultra 200's R value. Need I say more about how poorly the industry is being served by its product designers? (the correct thickness of US150 is .64")
I would recommend a good wool knee-sock to wick the moisture up out of the shoe. There is plenty of airflow, even under tights, to accomplish this. They also do a great job of keeping your calves warm - especially the snowboarding kind with extra padding in the back for heel-side pressures.
PS: I was very surprised that a Google search for 'R-Value' turned up this blog post first and foremost. Given this I was a little uncomfortable with my source for this info, so took it upon myself to do a few hours of research. I found two sources I found credible, cited at the bottom of this Excel spreadsheet. The first was from an educational physics page, and the second was a Wikipedia page on R-Values. As you can see, I looked for materials the two tables had in common and then tried to come up with a conversion factor.
I ended up favoring foam board as reference materials, as they too are purposely designed to insulate. Of interest, felt, though heavier, would be a good alternative to Thinsulate. Please note, the table R-Values are for 1" thicknesses, while the R-Value for Thinsulate is for the material's stated thickness. At the end of the day, it looks like it would take 3-6" of neoprene to match the insulation provided by the best Thinsulate. (A layer of US100 and one of US150 is ~ 1" and R 3.32)
The materials` weights are wildly out of proportion to each other. It should also be noted that these values are for conduction losses only, which assumes they are in an air-tight environment and all radiant losses have been eliminated. (both good assumptions under SpaceBlanket, but uncovered, far, far from bicycle shoe cover conditions)
I finally got out the door today, after taping some SpaceBlanket stuff over my shoes to keep the wind out and the heat in, gathering up all of my cold-weather gear, long-fingered gloves and such, and finding my Gatorade back. It was mostly cloudy, but not that all-day bone-chilling cold kind of day. In fact, it felt pretty warm, around 50 I think, and when the sun shone through it was gorgeous. My feet were toasty warm, and being warm and comfortable is a sure way to find the joy in a sunny day.
It wasn't a long ride. I didn't want to get caught too far from home if the sky opened up, and it was the first time out on a real ride with my new back wheel, so I wanted to be a bit cautious. About that. I have a very serious suggestion for anyone contemplating buying a new bike. Buy some good custom-built wheels for your old ride first - or if not that, put your old wheels on any new bike you are thinking of buying and go for a ride. Most of the difference in ride quality between a $2,000 msrp bike and a $5,000 bike is the wheels. Really. No bull. It's just amazing.
The difference in ride quality between my old and new rear wheel is more than the change from my steel bike to my carbon one. I can't even feel the roughness of the road now except for my POS radially spoked front wheel. It's going to get replaced as soon as I get through Christmas. If the hub were better quality I would just re-lace the wheel with DT Revolution spokes and ride on, but with only 20 spoke drillings, there just isn't much that can be done with them.
The rear wheel performed better than even I had expected on the return home today. There is a sharp left turn at the bottom of a hill where the asphalt is really torn up and wrinkled. I normally have to slow down to 10-12 mph to take the turn, and then add a lot of power to climb back up the hill to the left. I was a bit cautious today, but I carried 15-18 mph into the turn and knew immediately I could have carried far more speed into it if the front wheel had been more compliant. I cannot feel any harshness at all coming from the rear wheel. Only the front.
The freewheel hub's ratchet is almost silent. No one will ever know when I am tired and coasting. I'm the stealth rider now! The bluish tint on the Ultegra hub is very nice in outdoor light too. I am just chomping at the bit to get the front one ordered now. I will get it with the Mavic's CD treatment to reduce rim wear on the braking surface up front, as the front wheel takes 4-5X the braking wear as the rear. The micro machining on the new rear rim was very sticky, completely homogeneous, and that was in wet, sandy conditions. Very impressive.
I only wish I had bought custom wheels this spring. It would have made the training miles so much easier.
